Loon Lake

27

Data comprising life F. W. Bennett undergoing review.

Shown in two instances twenty-five years apart of labor

relations lacking compassion or flexible policy understanding

workers’ needs. His dramatization suggests life devoted almost

entirely to selfish accumulation of wealth and ritual use thereof

according to established patterns of utmost class. It is

alleged he patronizes unsavory elements of society for his

business gain. It is alleged that he is sexually exploitative.

It is suggested he is at least unmoved by the violent death

of another human attributable to his calculated negligence.

Countervailing data re his apparent generosity to

worthless poet scrounge and likely drunkard Warren Penfield.

A hint too of his pride in Lucinda Bailey Bennett’s aviation

achievements. A heart too for spunky

derelict kids.

Your register respectfully advises the need for additional

countervailing data. History suggests of the class of which Mr.

F. W. Bennett is a member no unalloyed spirit of evil the dimes

which John D. Rockefeller senior gave away compulsively to

people in the street became the multimillions of his sons’

philanthropies. Andrew Carnegie’s beneficence well attested,

as well as William Randolph Hearst’s Milk Fund for Babies.

And examination of the general practice of families of

immeasurable wealth in US suggests their generosity cannot

be explained entirely as self-serving public relations but

may be seen as manifesting anthropologically identified

principle of potlatch observed operating in primitive social

systems throughout the world from northern forest aboriginals

to unclad natives of tropical paradises. The principle

regardless of currency of benefaction breadfruit pigs palm

fronds or dollars is that wealth is accumulated so that

it can be given away thus bringing honor to the giver.

I refer to an American landscape from every region of which

rise hospitals universities libraries museums planetaria

parks think-tanks and other institutions for the public weal

all of which are the benefactions of the utmost class.

I cite achievements F. W. Bennett in his lifetime the original

endowments of the Western miners’ Black Lung Research Facility,

Denver, Colorado. The Gymnasium of Miss Morris’ School,

Briarcliff Manor NY, the Mexican Silver Workers’ Church of the

Holy St. Clare, Popxacetl Mexico, The Bennett Library on the

grounds of Jordan College, Rhinebeck NY, the Bennett

Engineering Institute, Albany NY, plus numerous ongoing

benefactions of worthy charities and researches plus innumerable

acts of charity to individuals never publicized.

I attribute to F. W. Bennett in his death a last will and

testament of such public generosity as to receive acknowledgment

on the front page of the New York Times data available

upon request.

—

Generally speaking a view of the available economic systems

that have been tested historically must acknowledge the immense

power of capitalism to generate living standards food housing

education the amenities to a degree unprecedented in human

civilization. The benefits of such a system while occasionally

random and unpredictable with periods of undeniable stress

1and misery depression starvation and degradation are

inevitably distributed to a greater and greater percentage

of the population. The periods of economic stability also

ensure a greater degree of popular political freedom

and among the industrial Western democracies today despite

occasional suppression of free speech quashing of dissent

corruption of public officials and despite the tendency of

legislation to serve the interests of the ruling business

oligarchy the poisoning of the air water the chemical adulteration

of food the obscene development of hideous weaponry the

increased costs of simple survival the waste of human resources

the ruin of cities the servitude of backward foreign populations

the standards of life under capitalism by any criterion are

far greater than under state socialism in whatever forms

it is found British Swedish Cuban Soviet or Chinese. Thus

the good that fierce advocacy of personal wealth accomplishes

in the historical run of things outweighs the bad. And while

we may not admire always the personal motives of our business

leaders we can appreciate the inevitable percolation of the

good life as it comes down through our native American soil.

You cannot observe the bounteous beauty of our country nor take

pleasure in its most ordinary institutions in peace and safety

without acknowledging the extraordinary achievement of

American civilization. There are no Japanese bandits lying

in wait on the Tokaidoways after all. Drive down the

turnpike past the pretty painted pipes of the oil refineries

and no one will hurt you.

—

No claim for the perfection of F. W. Bennett, only that like

all men he was of his generation and reflected his times in

his person. We know that by the nineteen-fifties at an advanced

age he had come finally to see unions as partners in

enterprise and to cooperate fully on a first-name basis with

major labor leaders playing golf of course at that age he

only drove a ball twenty or thirty yards but they called him

Mr. Frank and with humor admired his sportif outfits the

beige-yellow slacks the brown-and-white shoes with the tassels

the Hawaiian shirt with his breasts showing. Note is made here

too that this man had a boyhood, after all, woke

in the astonishment of a bedsheet of sap suffered acne

had feelings which frightened him and he tried to suppress

was cruelly motivated by unthinking adults perhaps rebuffed

or humiliated by a teacher these experiences are not the

sole prerogative of the poor poverty is not a moral

endowment and a man who has the strength to help himself

can help others. I cite too the ordinary fears of

mortality the inspection of a fast-growing mole on the side

of the nose blood in the stool a painful injury or the

mournful witness of the slow death of a parent all this is

given to all men as well as the starting awake in the

nether hours of the night from such glutinous nightmare

that one’s self name relationships nationality place in life

all data of specificity wipe out amnesiatically asiatically you

don’t even know the idea human it is such a low hour of the

night and he shares that with all of us. I therefore declare

F. W. Bennett to embody the fullness of the perplexity of

living, as they say.

I cite here his voice which people who knew him only in his

later years believed to be ridden and cracked with his age

but in fact his voice had always been rather high reedy

with a gravelly consistency around its edges and some people

found this menacing but others thought it avuncular

especially after his operation for cataracts when they wear

those goggle glasses. But it was one of those voices of such

individual character that people who never heard it can

imagine it just by the mention of his name and those standing

in the great crush of honors at his funeral could believe

themselves likely to hear it for many years afterward as if a

man of this strong presence could not release his hold on

life except very very slowly and, buried or not, manifest

a half life, probably, of twenty-five thousand years.